5 ms·

I'd qualify it by saying: "With a lot of hard work, and the legal freedom to move away, anyone can break out of poverty." Staying in the same place (sounds li

by cheez 11y ago

I'd qualify it by saying: "With a lot of hard work, and the legal freedom to move away, anyone can break out of poverty." Staying in the same place (sounds like your grandparents were kick ass people) is pretty much the death sentence and many people, after certain youthful indiscretions may not be permitted to leave the area. Plus, you're white so I'm guessing you've never been detained for "matching the description".

eropple 11y ago
> "With a lot of hard work, and the legal freedom to move away, anyone can break out of poverty." And, in many ways, the purest luck of the draw. If his grandfather didn't have a C64, what happens? Or for me, if my dad doesn't happen to go from selling office furniture to playing with computers when I was very young and I don't happen to then have computers lying around that I'm allowed to play with basically unimpeded from the age of three or four...am I in this field? Am I as good at it as I am? Isolating causes is so very, very difficult when it comes to the individual (easier when you are working with statistically meaningful populations, of course); trying to boil it down to "hard work" leaves out a lot of "hard workers" who end up disabled before they're 60 because their jobs grind them to powder.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  It's a real lot of luck, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. I was very lucky. I didn't (and don't) work harder than my peers who didn't make it out of poverty, yet I did. Amount of effort isn't correlated with measures of financial security.
  - eropple 11y ago
    Well, there's also that, yeah? =) I don't think I work very hard. I would think less of myself if I did work very hard. I burn way more cycles on "how to be a good human" than I do anything work-related.
  - nathanasmith 11y ago
    Yeah well, in everything I've done as far back as I can remember when I worked harder I got better results and when I slacked off, I got worse results. I'm thinking how hard you work has a little more to do with success than you give it credit for.
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      I grew up in poverty. I was poor and I only knew other poor kids until I was 18. When I first started associating with people who grew up middle and upper class I felt like I was in another very foreign world. I have plenty of childhood friends who did the "right" things (some went to college even) and work just as hard as I do but are still poor for various reasons. Working hard doesn't, by default, lead to financial security. Working hard can lead to financial security but there's a lot of luck involved as well. Not to mention planning - unless you count that as work. Trust me I am not saying working hard doesn't lead of results or don't work hard. I am saying that poverty isn't synonymous with "lazy" or even "not working hard enough."
      - nathanasmith 11y ago
        I mostly agree with you. Maybe our emphasis is different. I try to look at the issue from a practical standpoint. I can't change where I was born or how much money my parents had or even what I did 5 minutes ago. What I can do is take my present set of circumstances and do what I can do to make things better from this point on. If I lay in bed all day, things aren't going to improve but if I get on this computer and work until 9 o'clock tonight doing what it is that I do then I stand a pretty good chance of having a more prosperous future. Especially if I do that consistently. And it's hard work. I'd rather play video games but I don't. I work. Regarding the people you grew up with, you say they work as hard as you do. Are you sure about that? And while they may be working hard, how smart are they working? For instance, some went to college, did they get a degree in something that is in high demand where the pay is good? And getting a college degree is only one piece of a good education. How much did they really learn, and consequently, how competitive are they in the job market? Even if they're all in high demand STEM fields, they still have to compete with the thousands of other job seekers after all. Thinking through the alternatives and making smarter choices is hard work. And that is cumulative. It's kind of like compound interest too. You may not see a big difference from day to day or month to month but given some roll of the dice in circumstances, over the course of years and decades, working hard will almost always make a huge difference.
- Futurebot 11y ago
  Yup. There's plenty of people who want to continue to believe in our broken meritocracy, that the (bowdlerized) Alger bootstraps tales are possible for everyone. They aren't. There are enormous numbers of people who work very hard and get nowhere. The elements of the "Character Hypothesis" (persistence, determination, self-control / the ability to delay gratification, abstention from substance use, curiosity, conscientiousness, self-confidence, emotional intelligence, good communication skills, a willingness to listen, and grit) are all necessary to escape poverty, but not anywhere sufficient. Pure chance is a huge factor, but acknowledging that fact destroys the entire project in some minds. There's a reason the Nordics have so much higher social mobility than the US does. They actually work at it: "In addition to other correlations with negative social outcomes for societies having high inequality, they found a relationship between high social inequality and low social mobility. Of the eight countries studied — Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the UK and the USA, the USA had both the highest economic inequality and lowest economic mobility. In this and other studies, in fact, the USA has very low mobility at the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, with mobility increasing slightly as one goes up the ladder. At the top rung of the ladder, however, mobility again decreases.[10] One study comparing social mobility between developed countries[11][12][13] found that the four countries with the lowest "intergenerational income elasticity", i.e. the highest social mobility, were Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Canada with less than 20% of advantages of having a high income parent passed on to their children" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

by cheez 11y ago

eropple 11y ago

> "With a lot of hard work, and the legal freedom to move away, anyone can break out of poverty." And, in many ways, the purest luck of the draw. If his grandfather didn't have a C64, what happens? Or for me, if my dad doesn't happen to go from selling office furniture to playing with computers when I was very young and I don't happen to then have computers lying around that I'm allowed to play with basically unimpeded from the age of three or four...am I in this field? Am I as good at it as I am? Isolating causes is so very, very difficult when it comes to the individual (easier when you are working with statistically meaningful populations, of course); trying to boil it down to "hard work" leaves out a lot of "hard workers" who end up disabled before they're 60 because their jobs grind them to powder.

nommm-nommm 11y ago
It's a real lot of luck, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. I was very lucky. I didn't (and don't) work harder than my peers who didn't make it out of poverty, yet I did. Amount of effort isn't correlated with measures of financial security.
- eropple 11y ago
  Well, there's also that, yeah? =) I don't think I work very hard. I would think less of myself if I did work very hard. I burn way more cycles on "how to be a good human" than I do anything work-related.
- nathanasmith 11y ago
  Yeah well, in everything I've done as far back as I can remember when I worked harder I got better results and when I slacked off, I got worse results. I'm thinking how hard you work has a little more to do with success than you give it credit for.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    I grew up in poverty. I was poor and I only knew other poor kids until I was 18. When I first started associating with people who grew up middle and upper class I felt like I was in another very foreign world. I have plenty of childhood friends who did the "right" things (some went to college even) and work just as hard as I do but are still poor for various reasons. Working hard doesn't, by default, lead to financial security. Working hard can lead to financial security but there's a lot of luck involved as well. Not to mention planning - unless you count that as work. Trust me I am not saying working hard doesn't lead of results or don't work hard. I am saying that poverty isn't synonymous with "lazy" or even "not working hard enough."
    - nathanasmith 11y ago
      I mostly agree with you. Maybe our emphasis is different. I try to look at the issue from a practical standpoint. I can't change where I was born or how much money my parents had or even what I did 5 minutes ago. What I can do is take my present set of circumstances and do what I can do to make things better from this point on. If I lay in bed all day, things aren't going to improve but if I get on this computer and work until 9 o'clock tonight doing what it is that I do then I stand a pretty good chance of having a more prosperous future. Especially if I do that consistently. And it's hard work. I'd rather play video games but I don't. I work. Regarding the people you grew up with, you say they work as hard as you do. Are you sure about that? And while they may be working hard, how smart are they working? For instance, some went to college, did they get a degree in something that is in high demand where the pay is good? And getting a college degree is only one piece of a good education. How much did they really learn, and consequently, how competitive are they in the job market? Even if they're all in high demand STEM fields, they still have to compete with the thousands of other job seekers after all. Thinking through the alternatives and making smarter choices is hard work. And that is cumulative. It's kind of like compound interest too. You may not see a big difference from day to day or month to month but given some roll of the dice in circumstances, over the course of years and decades, working hard will almost always make a huge difference.
Futurebot 11y ago
Yup. There's plenty of people who want to continue to believe in our broken meritocracy, that the (bowdlerized) Alger bootstraps tales are possible for everyone. They aren't. There are enormous numbers of people who work very hard and get nowhere. The elements of the "Character Hypothesis" (persistence, determination, self-control / the ability to delay gratification, abstention from substance use, curiosity, conscientiousness, self-confidence, emotional intelligence, good communication skills, a willingness to listen, and grit) are all necessary to escape poverty, but not anywhere sufficient. Pure chance is a huge factor, but acknowledging that fact destroys the entire project in some minds. There's a reason the Nordics have so much higher social mobility than the US does. They actually work at it: "In addition to other correlations with negative social outcomes for societies having high inequality, they found a relationship between high social inequality and low social mobility. Of the eight countries studied — Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the UK and the USA, the USA had both the highest economic inequality and lowest economic mobility. In this and other studies, in fact, the USA has very low mobility at the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, with mobility increasing slightly as one goes up the ladder. At the top rung of the ladder, however, mobility again decreases.[10] One study comparing social mobility between developed countries[11][12][13] found that the four countries with the lowest "intergenerational income elasticity", i.e. the highest social mobility, were Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Canada with less than 20% of advantages of having a high income parent passed on to their children" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility